


I Remember The Music

by FabulousPotatoSister



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Amnesia, Composing Songs, Continuity (There's a reference to 'Snogbox'), F/M, How Do I Tag, I watched 'August Rush' and voila this was born, I'm sorry. I'm kinda having a bad day, Memory Loss, Memory Residue, Music, Pianos, This is really inconsistent, What Really IS Tagging?, remembering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-15
Updated: 2015-08-15
Packaged: 2018-04-14 19:24:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4576836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FabulousPotatoSister/pseuds/FabulousPotatoSister
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She has to write it down...</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Remember The Music

**Author's Note:**

> Gah, just take this!
> 
> As said in the tags, I got inspired by the movie August Rush to write this and so I did. This is longer than I thought it would be.
> 
> Written in the Writer app. It's got word count, it's simple and easy to use, it uses markdown and ooh! Estimated reading time.
> 
> The asterisks are supposed to be italics, lmao.
> 
> The ERT for this one is: 8 minutes, 12 seconds. 
> 
> Enjoy!

She jolts upright, her face glistening with sweat and her eyes wide and brimming with tears. Her lip trembles as she grips at the sheets, desperate for some sort of safety. She takes in quick, ragged breaths, her body shaking like a leaf in the storm and her mind refusing to work, the gears rusty and unmovable.

Brief flashes of blue fly before her eyes. She struggles to pull herself off the cold and lonely bed, a fight she has to fight everyday of her life, but her knees give out and she weeps at her weakness. She hates the way she is so vurnerable in the early hours of the day, when her hands buckle under the weight of memories she does not even remember. Memories of stars and planets beyond our comprehension, memories that disappear whenever she grasps at them for the truth, the truth of her existence.

She gets ready for the day with a feeling of dread, the feeling of being an outsider, an alien, a feeling she gets because she knows she does not belong. She knows she was made to do something else other than work a boring desk job. She knows this because as her fingers fly across the black and white keys of the piano, as she lets her pen glid over paper, that she was made for the pianist's seat, she was made for the composer's throne.

Yet she cannot make a single melody. All the notes and scales lose meaning in her head, they sound bland, disinteresting, wrong and imperfect. She cannot find inspiration in even the most inspiring things, even the flutter of a bird's wing or the tinkle of a child's laugh. She puts the pieces together and they fall apart, nothing more like the play toys of a child. The melodies that roam the empty halls of her mind are not her own, and she wishes to have her own, her own and only piece, one that she can play without having to learn it, without having to struggle because she made it.

But she perseveres, sitting through ours of calls and paperwork, of annoying customers and bosses, of cups of coffee and deadlines. She sits and works through it all, the fragments of a broken song crunching underneath her feet as she walks with her favorite pair of plain black flats, reminding her of her true purpose, one she cannot fulfill.

The gossamer sheets of her bedroom's curtains shimmer and shine against the rays of the setting sun. Another day over, another day done, another day finished. She gives a fleeting glance at her piano, the wood polish beckoning to her like a siren's mystic call, but she puts it off for another day. Will another day ever come? Will she ever gain the courage to fall back into the world of song?

She doesn't know.

She exhales through her nose, a deep, sorrowful sound. She wants to play. She wants to feel the keys under her fingers as they yield to her touch and play their chirps and tones for her. Her fingers twitch, yearning for the smoothness of the notes to come to her as they did naturally. And yet they do not. The music does not come to her, so she decides, she must come to the music.

Two tickets for a concert. One for her, and one for her best friend, Kaycee. Kaycee is not an avid music lover, but she agrees to go for her best friend. Tired eyes and a crooked smile are what told Kaycee to stay for her. The messy makeup that makes her look like she's been crying worry Kaycee, because she probably has been. 

They take their seats and the lead cellist catches her eye. When he begins to play, a tune begins to form in her head, the roots of a growing tree. She slips into another world for a moment, imagining a majestic tale of a madman with an impossible blue box. His dusted green eyes and his deep violet bowtie, his smile and the way he spoke, walked, lived and breathed. The way his anger scared her, the way he never noticed that he cried, the way his memories destroyed him from the inside like they were destroying her.

She couldn't remember his name but she knew one thing - she had to write a song.

The concert was over before she knew it. Kaycee takes her by the shoulders and shakes her vigorously, saying something along the lines of, *Write it down, just do it, do whatever it takes to fix yourself*. The gears of her mind are no longer rusty and old. She knows what to do.

And so she weaves. She weaves a tale of a madman. She writes his story in intense ballads of violin and piano, and she wrote it well. Papers covered the walls, notebooks were filled and pens ran out of ink faster than you can say "Geronimo!". She uses a odd time signiture but she doesn't care, she finds the inspiration and she grabs it like a hungry lion. She writes it for a whole orchestra, she writes it for the world to hear, and she hopes that the madman hears her as well.

She jolts upright in excitement, a wide grin on her face because for once in her life, she's truly alive, she can feel her heart beating and a rush through her veins, her head pounding with the sheer thought of her whole life ahead of her.

She laughs and jokes with her colleagues at the water cooler. She hums the tune she wrote under her breath as she works, tapping her favorite black flat against the floor and soon enough she's done, stacks of paperwork rising above her like towers of a castle. Her cup of coffee is left untouched as the light of the stars ilumminate the office. She gets home and she sits at the piano, trailing her fingers over the keys, the old keys that she's missed so much. She presses a finger down and there goes a note. She breathes out, a smile growing on her face. She presses another key and it's tone fills her flat. She laughs, a full laugh, a laugh that she's never laughed in such a long time, and she realizes that there is so much to life.

If only she could remember.

Sobs rack her body one day as she cries in front of the mirror, makeup running down her face but they're happy tears, because she remembers and it hurts but she remembers everything. She remembers the madman and his name is the Doctor. She remembers the TARDIS, the one he (stole) borrowed and she remembers the stars and she remembers that she kissed him, once, and it was amazing. She remembers the galaxies he showed her and the day she all forgot. She cries and she can't stop the tears because finally, she has a real reason to live. 

She shows it to friend, plays them a little demo, and they say that they felt powerful and strong, like they had all the power in the universe. She just smiles because she knows that's how the Doctor felt when he stared down an enemy, when he dragged them into ground with his words. When he shouted and screamed and fought for his loved ones so they could be safe. 

It sends a warm feeling to her chest when someone says that they like the piece. Word begins to spread and it spreads fast like fire on dry tinder. Her song begins to grow from a sapling to a full grown tree, its leaves spreading all across her community of friends, co-workers, and even her boss.

A poster flaps in the breeze and it's her poster, a poster with her smiling face on it. *Experience a majestic tale,*, it reads. *Come to the Beuzbaxon Concert Hall for a beautiful piece, 'I Am The Doctor (A Madman and His Impossible Box)'* 

She smiles everytime she sees it because that day, July 7, is the day the madman gets to hear the song she made for him, inspired by him and his stories of the stars. She hopes to see the familiar hues of the TARDIS and to hear its sound as the orchestra, the whole, complete orchestra, plays for him.

The crowd goes wild as she steps up the stage in a long gossamer gown, much like the curtain in her bedroom. They quiet down and a bird flies near her face, the flutter of its wings much like her heartbeat, quick, erratic. She raises a plain wooden stick, and, after a long silence, points at the violinists. They begin the first chords and something rushes through her bloodstream. *Adrenaline*, she thinks. *Maybe happy endorphins. I never really was a scientist.*

And then she conducts. With all her heart and soul, she moves her hands and the orchestra follows, stars exploding, aliens and robots and Cybermen and Daleks, the Time Vortex, Amy, the Girl Who Waited and Rory and Rose and Mickey and Sarah Jane, all of the years he had spent alive and all the people he loved and all the people he made suffer for their crimes, the Weeping Angels and River Song. Of a town called Mercy and Demon's Run, and of all the other things she possibly couldn't name. 

And then she hears it. The sound she's been waiting for all her life, the familiar wheezing that she's associated with hope and the hope that almost everyone deserves a shot at forgiveness, that almost everyone can be saved but not all, because some people can't be given that chance. Her song is nearing its end and she ends with a bang, with sharp chords that leave even the most satisfied of people wanting more. 

She spins around and there he is, smiling, leaning against his TARDIS with a single tear rolling down his cheek but he doesn't know. He's got no one by his side and her heart sinks through the floor because he's been lonely with no one to talk to and no one to love.

She descends the stage and the crowd cheers. She never wanted the fame, or the glory, she just wanted him to hear her song for him and finally, he has, his coat blowing against the wind like a violet storm and his hair flopping over his face. She likens him to a giraffe. Tall, lanky, and yet endearing in his own, quirky, alien way.

"Hi..." she begins, her voice a whisper on the raging breeze. A nervous grin slips onto her face, her tired face, tired but happy. 

"Has anyone ever told you that you are an amazing human being?"

"Only by you."

"You - you remember!"

"Why wouldn't I?"

He envelopes her in a big hug, his strong arms like a brick wall and she just collapses, tears flowing out of her eyes but why wouldn't she be crying? She clutches onto his jacket like he's the only thing that matters to her and in this moment it is, just her and her Doctor. She can feel him rubbing her back, sending shocks throughout her body but they don't hurt, they just tingle, in a good way. 

"Was the song for me?"

"Yeah. Yeah, it was for you."

"What do you call it?"

"'I Am The Doctor'. Or 'A Madman and His Impossible Box'. It could be your leitmotif."

"With you writing it, it already is. Now - how would you like to see the stars again?"

And now she stays in the TARDIS, writing a song that never ends, an interstellar lullaby, weaving itself with every step she takes, and everytime she runs. 

"She remembers the music, and she's not going to let it go."

"Now!" you chirp happily, eyes bright, "Who's up for another story?"

"I am!" squeaks a small, yellow-skinned girl. She grins at you toothily and your heart skips a beat. 

Different murmurs fill the brightly colored room, and you giggle. The Doctor places a hand on your shoulder.

"We can't deny them another tale, can we?" he prompts, and you place you hand over his.

"No. We can't. Anyway! Let's begin."

"Here is a story of five kisses..."


End file.
